You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your agency’s website, crafting a great sales and service tool for your customers, partners, and employees. It’s out there and it looks good, but your work is not done. To make your website great, you need regular maintenance and updates. Just as you constantly check in and update your customers, you must do the same with your website to stay relevant and competitive.
The key to a quality site is a positive user experience. Your agency’s website must be intuitive, clean, and easy to navigate. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if it’s up to snuff, so look for signs that it’s time to update. You’re due for a re-vamp when:
Your site is NOT MOBILE READY
Mobile compatible websites are a must for any business. If your agency isn’t mobile ready, this should be your first order of business. Creating a mobile friendly website is easy and with platforms such as Squarespace, your site can go mobile with the click of a button. However, you should always preview and test first, working out any kinks before making it live.
Your site is STATIC
It’s okay to have some static elements of your website, but it should have dynamic aspects as well. Current CSS updates make it easy to add elements such as videos and social media feeds, making your page come alive to users. Look into responsive designs offering roll over and other interactive elements to keep users interested.
Your site has the ORIGINAL DESIGN
If it’s been over two years since you created your agency’s website, you’re overdue for a redesign. Trends change and your existing and potential customers will be looking for a site reflecting the current style. This means changing colors, menu navigations, and other aspects of page design. New technology quickly makes what was impossible yesterday, possible. Check out some recent design trends at 99designs.com.
Your site has OUTDATED INFORMATION
Part of making your website dynamic is keeping the information fresh. This means updating your agency’s address, phone, employee information, and including an aspect that is always changing. Include a blog, “tip of the day”, or customer testimonial to keep things current and relevant.
Check out other agency and industry sites to see how yours compares. By taking a look at other designs, you’ll get a sense of what you want in your own website.
The sispartnerplatform.com is always growing and changing to keep up with our clients, providing the resources needed to run a top-of-the-line agency. Check out some of these resources for yourself, or contact us at [email protected] to get connected.
So you’ve crossed your “t’s” and dotted your “i’s”, protecting your agency for when disaster strikes. You’ve installed generators and emergency alert systems, and your contingency plan is in tip-top shape. But, how can you ensure your agency is ready to face a disaster situation? The only sure-fire way is to test yourself, your infrastructure, and your staff.
Start by testing your emergency alert systems. Run checks on:
Alarm systems
Smoke detectors and sprinklers
Emergency exit doors and signs
Next, confirm your generator and backup system are in working order. This means testing both, and providing enough extra fuel to keep each running.
Finally, check-in on your building structure, looking over items such as your roofing, windows, and doors. Make sure your building is up to standards, knowing what to look for to guarantee safety.
After checking infrastructure, put your agency’s Disaster Contingency plan to the test with random disaster preparedness drills. The goal of these drills is to ensure your staff is ready, and to look for any holes in your contingency plan. Put a team of individuals in charge of conducting regular drills, covering all possible emergency situations. It is important to run these simulations without warning so staff will have to think on their feet, just as they would in the real-life situation.
Bring in your agency partners as part of your simulations and tests, including your agency management system provider. At SIS, we regularly check our redundant backup systems and work with Partner XE users to ensure they’re ready for anything. Collaboration is an important part of our partnership with our clients as we strive to be fully prepared when disaster strikes.
To find out more about how we care for our clients, including our latest Partner XE updates, contact us at [email protected] or 800.747.7005.
Columbus, OH – Strategic Insurance Software (SIS), creators of Partner XE, a leading agency management system for independent agents, is excited to announce the upcoming release of Partner XE 2015. The new release will be rolled out to all users over the course of the next four weeks.
As with past updates, user feedback was the primary driver of change, with requests from dozens of partners translating into over 200 system updates designed to enhance independent agencies’ workflow.
Alex Deak, CEO of SIS, stated, “This Partner XE release is a milestone for the software, and includes a complete redesign of certificate management workflow for better efficiency and ease of use. This release combines feedback from our customers with power of the latest technology, making it one of the most significant releases to date. Test groups and selected clients alike have praised this update as a tremendous step forward and we’re anticipating rave reviews when we get it in the hands of all of our users.”
In addition to the certificate management update, the software release also provides users with a better user experience, enhanced functionality, and updates that make work more efficient.
Better User Experience
The updated Partner XE software includes new layouts and user interactions to make the program more user-friendly. Some of these updates include:
Enhanced management of commercial lines schedules
Improved Client Summary and Download Entity Assignment window layouts and functionality
Optimized QuickCreate panel
Enhanced Functionality
With updates coming in from ACORD, and technology moving faster than ever, software updates need to continue to keep pace. To account for these changes, Partner XE 2015 includes:
Increased LOB support
Batch printing of invoices
Improved email signature
More Efficient
Independent agents manage more than their fair share of details. Partner XE 2015 will make life more efficient with:
Enhanced matching capabilities within the Policy Download
Improved Policy Summary now includes a Transaction Effective date for cancelled policies
Displayed primary phone number and email addresses on all searches for Clients, Individuals, and Contacts
According to Bryce Lee, Product Manager in charge of Partner XE 2015, “Partner XE 2015 includes more tools for the success of our clients. It is faster, easier to use, and provides more ways for agents to make business more efficient. It’s truly a game-changer in the independent insurance business.”
Any disaster your agency faces is marked by one dangerous element: unpredictability. Dealing with disaster is that much harder because no one knows where or when a crisis will strike. Agencies with a contingency plan in place, however, will be better prepared to face the storm than those who don’t.
An agency contingency plan is a disaster prep and management document – think of it as a roadmap to weathering the storm. In this plan, you should include general emergency procedures and procedures specific to the different crises your agency could encounter. The contingency plan’s main purpose is to keep your employees, infrastructure and information, and agency operations safe.
Keep your employees safe by including:
A point person or team of people to manage the plan’s execution.
An evacuation plan for employees, including how and when employees should evacuate.
Procedures specific to disasters within the building (i.e. active shooter) vs outside the building (i.e. flood).
Keep your infrastructure and information safe by:
Detailing how to retrieve your agency’s data from back-up devices during an emergency.
Putting a team in charge of checking data, looking for missing or damaged information, and heading up recovery efforts.
Setting up alternative communication means, such as virtual meetings and teleconferencing, so employees know how to get updates and remain connected.
Keep your agency operations safe with:
A definitive chain of command, including appointing all decision makers a “back-up” in case they are unable to perform their duties.
Set assignments for each employee and/or department so everyone is sure of their specific task and can get started immediately when crisis hits.
Detailed procedures for informing customers and keeping them updated as business returns to normal.
Many businesses tend to put contingency planning on the back burner, but this is a mistake your agency cannot afford. When putting together your plan, be sure to have individuals from each department review the document. Once you have a solid plan, go over it with your employees, hitting the high points so there is no surprise when the plan needs to be put into action. Ensure your staff has access to the plan in both electronic and hard copy form so it can be referenced with or without electricity.
Most importantly, reassess your plan frequently, at least annually. It is important to ensure items such as employee contact information and agency procedures stay up-to-date.
We at SIS know the importance of staying current for the sake of emergency preparedness, which is why we frequently update our Partner XE agency management system with the latest technology, including redundant back-ups of data. Find out more about the latest Partner XE enhancements and features, check out our website or contact us at [email protected].
For independent insurance agencies, the benefits of creating and engaging in communities are many – name recognition, new relationships, and widening your sphere of influence, to name a few. However, building and becoming a stable part of a community, like all things worthwhile, takes time. By investing that time into your agency and your local neighborhood, you will be able to create lasting connections for sustainable business.
To help your agency gain the benefits of community involvement, we’ve put together an eGuide addressing Harnessing the Power of Community. In this guide, we provide tips on how to engage in your local community and identify communities in your agency. Download the eGuide here, and check out our other resources, such as additional printable guides and our Partner XE client portal, to help improve your agency operations.
We at SIS are always looking for ways to build and engage community within our business, among our clients, and in our local neighborhood here in Columbus, Ohio. Let us know how we can improve! Contact us today at 800.747.9273.
This year continued a trend of technology’s growing influence in the insurance market and all industries at large. We saw a shift where more clients embraced agency software and integrated it into their regular systems and processes. This growing interest and influence prompted our Partner Platform and SIS teams to ramp up our tech focus, including several blog posts on this highly relevant topic.
Prospecting in any industry takes a combination of the right “stuff” (technology, data, people) and the right execution (systems and processes). Though it may be tempting, purchasing the best insurance prospecting software isn’t a solution on its own; you and your team need to understand how to leverage it.
We’ve worked with countless agencies to help them get their insurance prospecting software to work with and for them. Here are some common pitfalls we see in agencies struggling to put their software to work.
The year 2020 was unique in many ways, one of which was how the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the use of technology across industries. This was just the beginning. We continue to see insurance software emerge as a decisive factor among agencies. Many...
Start by testing your emergency alert systems. Run checks on:
Columbus, OH – Strategic Insurance Software (SIS), creators of Partner XE, a leading agency management system for independent agents, is excited to announce the upcoming release of Partner XE 2015. The new release will be rolled out to all users over the course of the next four weeks.
Any disaster your agency faces is marked by one dangerous element: unpredictability. Dealing with disaster is that much harder because no one knows where or when a crisis will strike. Agencies with a contingency plan in place, however, will be better prepared to face the storm than those who don’t.
You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your agency’s website, crafting a great sales and service tool for your customers, partners, and employees. It’s out there and it looks good, but your work is not done. To make your website great, you need regular maintenance and updates. Just as you constantly check in and update your customers, you must do the same with your website to stay relevant and competitive.